When reading recreationally, I want a book that’s easy on the mind, yet emotionally gripping. It’s rare that my eyes will drift to the dry, unemotional stuff. That’s why I was surprised to find myself drawn to the work of one of the greatest hardboiled detective writers of all time: Dashiell Hammett.

When first confronted by hardboiled fiction such as Hammett’s, one notices the unique tone. The writing is unemotional. The protagonist is detached. The characters’ thoughts are obscured by unpredictable personalities. Violence is commonplace and treated with little or no emotional weight. Because of the callousness of his writing, it’s miraculous that anyone can be drawn in. What, then, makes his style so gripping?

Before delving into that question, it’s important to learn a little about the author. Samuel Dashiell Hammett, after dropping out of school at age 13 and working several jobs, joined the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1915 at age 21 as an operative and worked for them until 1922, taking a ‘break’ for a few years to serve in WWI. He left Pinkerton, disillusioned with its involvement in union breaking. He turned to writing and, later, became a political activist before being blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy and sent to serve time in prison in Virginia. Not a normal life.

So, back to the question: what makes Hammett’s style so riveting?

First, to put it simply, the content of his novels is brilliant. The diversity and complexity of characters, suspects, personal and political motives, and plots clearly imported from his personal experiences in each of his stories make for an interesting read. Red Harvest, perhaps his most famous novel aside from The Maltese Falcon, has a tremendous web of characters, from the unpredictable yet greedy Dinah Brand to the mysterious Max “Whisper” Thaler. The Dain Curse contains three apparently different stories about the same characters that can only be solved by subtly linking all three together.

Second, as they are all, at the very least, mystery novels, his style allows us to easily avoid the emotional jargon and judge the cases, crimes, and characters themselves. We are forced to take a detective’s unemotional point of view. Hammett’s experience as a detective is crucial; he knows being a detective requires forced detachment. In Red Harvest, the detective is faced with a complex web of rival gangs and corrupt politicians. Despite the vast number of characters and their unique personalities, we never catch even a glimpse of the protagonist’s thoughts. Consequently, our loyalties shift every page from one gang leader to the next, suspecting one and then another. We’re forced to sift through the parties involved to get to the core of the story: the crimes and corruption.  The Glass Key follows the gambler Ned Beaumont and, despite his apparent loyalty to the politician Paul Madvig, we are confronted time and again with Beaumont’s detachment and rationality. His loyalty seems questionable, but that is not important. What is important is the crime he sets out to solve.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Hammett’s style allows me to catch a powerful glimpse of the political climate of the 1920s and 1930s. The “roaring twenties” roared with corruption, from President Harding’s administration to the dirty bootlegging of Al Capone. The only choice was to become a cynic. As I said earlier, Hammett broke away from Pinkerton because of its involvement in union breaking. He got involved in dirty and corrupt cases and would see no more of it. It is perhaps because of this that his last novel, The Thin Man, follows a retired detective as he’s reluctantly drawn into solving a crime in the streets of New York City.

I hope by this point I have kindled your interest in Dashiell Hammett. With readings piled high on my desk, and the options of Facebook and YouTube always at my fingers, recreational reading becomes marginalized. However, when I pick up a Hammett novel, I’m gripped whether I’m reading it for the first time or re-reading it for the third.